Salvadorans continue protesting against Bitcoin as a national currency. Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets. They are calling on the government to cancel the controversial law that is likely to boost the already flourishing corruption in Latin America.
Protestors have been gathering near the Supreme Court building for several weeks already.
Ordinary people have adopted a hardline stance against El Salvador's new national currency. They are burning tyres and setting off fireworks, honking their horns and turning on music. "The Bitcoin law was approved in parliament with hardly any debate. It took only about five hours to go through. The state is backing these payments and assuming the risk but at the end of the day us taxpayers are all the state," opposition politician Johnny Wright Sol said.
Members of the International Monetary Fund also support protestors. They suppose that the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender may cause a lot of problems. The IMF warned that “domestic prices could become highly unstable”. What is more, “without robust anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism measures, cryptoassets can be used to launder ill-gotten money, fund terrorism, and evade taxes.”
However, President Nayib Bukele is sure that the adoption of BTC as legal tender will make it easier for citizens of the country working abroad to send money to their homeland. “Bitcoin could save the country $400m a year in transaction fees on funds sent from abroad,”he thinks. "We must break the paradigms of the past. El Salvador has the right to advance towards the first world," President Bukele tweeted.
